Posted
by
ScuttleMonkey
on Monday October 05, 2009 @02:30PM
from the hijack-and-inject-vaccine dept.

TechReviewAl writes "Researchers at the University of California at Santa Barbara hijacked the Mebroot botnet for about a month and used it to study drive-by downloading. The researchers managed to intercept Mebroot communications by reverse-engineering the algorithm used to select domains to connect to. Mebroot infects legitimate websites and uses them to redirect users to malicious sites that attempt to install malware on a victim's machine. The team, who previously infiltrated the Torpig botnet, found that at least 13.3 percent of systems that were redirected by Mebroot were already infected and 70 percent were vulnerable to about 40 common attacks."

From TFA: "The next two most popular operating systems were Mac OS X 10.4 'Tiger' and Mac OS X 10.5 'Leopard,' which accounted for 6.4 percent of all visitors."

This means that exploit JavaScript code has been tuned to target vulnerabilities in Safari as well with code on the main exploit servers (the ones which initiate the drive by downloads) targeting vulnerabilities in some Apple Mac OS versions. The Mebroot gang is apparently among the more sophisticated bot net operators (i.e. they support alternative

I've never really understood the whole Mac vs. WIndows debate, and it's even more pointless now that you can have Mac, Win, and Linux running on the same box at the same time. Now, vi vs. emacs is a legitimate jihad.

This means that exploit JavaScript code has been tuned to target vulnerabilities in Safari as well

No, it means that the infected websites redirected visitors including Mac users. They were victims of redirection only at that point. It's the sites that people got redirected to that did the actual user-machine infecting. The article only says that six vulnerabilities were targeted but it doesn't say which. Mebroot (Master Boot Record Rootkit) is Windows based and isn't new.

"Using a variety of methods, the criminals behind Mebroot infect legitimate Web servers with Javascript code. The code redirects visitors to a different Internet domain, which changes every day, and where a malicious server attempts to compromise their computer with a program that provides the botnet's owners with remote control over that machine."

I'm not an expert, but the Mebroot description at F-Secure appears to show Windows systems as the target. Of course other mutations could potentially be created to target vulnerabilities on OS X or other platforms, but once in it couldn't just install the same Windows rootkit.(below from F-Secure, not article)http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00001393.html [f-secure.com]

The actual site hosting the exploit code utilizes the following exploits:

from article:"The researchers also discovered that nearly 70 percent of those redirected by Mebroot--as classified by Internet address--were vulnerable to one of almost 40 vulnerabilities regularly used by the most popular infection toolkits designed to compromise computer systems. About half that number were vulnerable to the six specific vulnerabilities used by the Mebroot toolkit."

For things that have been fixed, I think Mac users are generally a bit better about having OS and browser updates. Of course, like everyone else, they can still reduce significantly reduce risk by disabling browser functionality except when needed (as with NoScript and Firefox).

I'm concerned updates in other applications may be missed not only by users, but even developers.VLC promptly was updated for some vulnerabilities in underlying ffmpeg code, but users aren't always good about keeping VLC up to date (the older version for OS X 10.4 got an update as well as the current release.

There are a many video conversion, dvd assembly and other programs built on Windows and OS X using ffmpeg behind the scenes. In some cases the developers make little or no mention of it (LGPL/GPL compliance is a problem too). These programs don't seem to be getting the newer ffmpeg builds that address the problems.

Leave it to people who exploit pcs to get sloppy enough to leave the kitchen door unlocked.
Its more like carjacking a carjacker's own personal vehicle. News or no news, its a ray of sunshine that reminds us that this universe still has a balance. And it's got a sense of humor.

I think the same idea came up when this group hijaaked the Torpig net, and quite probably on several other similar occassions. Unfortunately, that opens up a whole new can of worms, if you'll excuse the pun. Specifically, if they issue commands for a botnet to shut itself down, or try to patch a vulnerable system, then they potentially become liable for whatever might go wrong. What if that vulnerable system was responsible for something critical and hadn't been patched because the patch broke the applic

What if that vulnerable system was responsible for something critical and hadn't been patched because the patch broke the application, for instance?

Ah, I've seen you've read the Admin Handbook: "Even if your critical system has been compromized and is a zombie in some malicious botnet, do not patch the vulnerability if the patch might compromise your critical system."

/sarcasm
yes, if it's not broken, don't fix it... then again, your definition of broken appears to be broken

I didn't say "don't fix the issue", just that there are occassions where you can't immediately apply a patch, no matter how desirable it might be. Sadly this scenario does happen from time to time and particularly so with enterprise applications, where "enterprise" is defined as "very expensive software with only a comparatively small number of customers and an even smaller group of developers". It's not just expensive, non-COTS applications either. Case in point Microsoft's DLL Hell v2.0 [slashdot.org] issue. Equally

They didn't exactly hijack the botnet. They just hijacked it's reproductive system. RTFA.

It spreads by a javascript which the criminals were able to inject into innocuous sites. This javascript sent visitors to an auto-generated URL which was registered by the botnet owners. This URL hosted the actual exploit which attempted to attack vulnerable visitors who landed there from the javascript. The URL changed every day, but by predicting it, the researchers were able to register domains before the botnet owners. As a result, victims of the drive-by javascript landed on the researchers' server instead of the botnet owners' servers. Needless to say, the researchers didn't attack the visitors and exploit their machines, but they did do some profiling to find out what sort of computers were hitting their server and how many of the visitors were unpatched, vulnerable boxes.

They've been doing that for years. The trick is to disassemble them fast enough that the bot writers can't adapt the net to avoid your code. The other problem is it's actually illegal to do that because then you're hacking the infected machine to install your code: which is criminal computer trespass (not that charges are filed often, but the threat is there).

Based on the way the DHS conducts themselves at state and international borders inside or out of airports, giving them more ability to bully citizens is certainly a bad idea. In fact, the creation of the DHS was a bad idea. Soon agents will be receiving warrants to sieze all of your computer

This liability excuse sounds like bullshit. Who is liable for a zombie? Let's do a little metaphor:
Rob Zombiemaster is robbing a bank. During the robbery, in a failed attempt to stop it, a guard shoots and misses Zombiemaster and hits the bank president in the head, killing him instantly, but also causing him to drop his cigarette into some flammable solvent someone was working with in the vicinity. The bank goes up in flames and burns down the whole block, killing everyone except Rob Zombiemaster and the guard. Zombiemaster escapes clean, with the money, and never killed anyone. The guard tells the authorities the tragic truth about his actions.

With whom does the liability for this catastrophe lay? With the guard? He did kill his boss and everyone on the block except the robber, so that's a reasonable assumption, though wrong. The liability for the deaths and property destruction still rests squarely on the shoulders of the wily Rob Zombiemaster, who, upon capture, will promptly be charged with multiple counts of murder long before he's charged with mere bank robbery. The guard gets off scott free.

Those lawyers sound more like lazy CIO's, but with no law degree, and less balls.

Sure, it certainly makes sense when you explain it out like that, but that doesn't mean that a family member of one of the innocent people who died isn't going to decide that they deserve money as compensation for their emotional pain and anguish. Zombiemaster is nowhere to be found, so they decide they're going to sue the bank, and the guard.

I would certainly argue that the guard isn't guilty of any wrongdoing, at least from a morality point of view. But when the law considers liability, we're not talking

Often, these bot nets are designed to install software for commission. The company paying the commission should be held accountable. They can play dumb and claim that they didn't know it was being installed in this manner, sure. But it would be fairly simple to make it so the installed software makes itself known to the user. It would be fairly simple to make it easy to un-install as well.

I know there are ways around it. But, it'd be great to see the companies selling the products that are making revenue to be accountable. They are enabling it. And they know it.

I'm not sure how many of these "companies" have a solid US presence, but there are plenty of scummy ones like those "antivirus 2009" and the like (which fake an infection to then sell you fake antivirus software to remove it). I believe a lot of these are run by offshore outfits from Russia, etc but I wouldn't be surprised to see a bunch of local companies complicit with them as well.

Somebody nailing them would make me a very happy person, more than when I managed to catch them trying to spoof my own site(s

Think of all the illegal copies of windows....now imagine that overnight they were to offer a special deal for those with an illegal copy of windows. Buy a license from us for 6months at 50$rechargeable every 6months after that...atleast everybody and their grandmother would get the first 6 months, get their updates, be rid of 90% of viruses and problems, getting rid of 3/4 of the botnets out in the wild, and then when it came to the next 6motnhs, Microsoft would have made their money already, the people will probably revert back to being non legal, with no ill effects, except for those talked into keeping their copies legit for further patches. The people that did buy legal copies would not have anything to bitch about, as these were not legit copies and revert back to being bad people...which most owning a legit copy do not want to be branded...everybody wins.

They have some serious cojones to be messing with dangerous organised criminals. Good on 'em and I hope they keep fighting the good fight -- and not come unstuck. They are stepping on the toes of some seriously ugly, violent people.

Wish I could mod you up. I watched the entire lecture...fascinating. It doesn't really look like it was all that challenging to compromise the botnet. What is hard is just finding someone with the balls to do it. Not only did Richard not have law enforcement approval--he didn't even have IRB approval.

It was also particularly telling that the FBI told him the had been wanting to do this for ages but could not get approval. I believe that because really if you watch this entire procedure there is real

So, The researchers were able to preregister the domains that the botnet was going to use to download software. Wouldn't it be possible to upload a patch to the website (obviously formatted such that it would be downloaded and executed by the infected machines)? I think that'd be pretty damn funny and efficient. Every infected machine patching itself at once and eliminating the virus. Some of the machines wouldn't be online at the time, but any machine not online also isn't a risk.

Strikes me that this is a "crime" somewhat akin to stealing money from a drug dealer. Sure, I guess you are doing something "illegal" since it's not your money, but it's not like the drug dealer is going to report you to the police...

Announcing this activity publicly doesn't strike me as particularly prudent, even if it is valuable information...

Well, politicians aren't held to ANY standard. Witness that senator for Mass they screwed into the ground just weeks ago. Ask the former Governor of Illinois what standards he was held to. He just went to far when he tried to auction off a senate position. I wonder what the results would be if I googled "Where to congressmen stick their peckers?" Employees and appointees have higher standards than elected officials, but that doesn't mean much.

Strikes me that this is a "crime" somewhat akin to stealing money from a drug dealer. Sure, I guess you are doing something "illegal" since it's not your money, but it's not like the drug dealer is going to report you to the police...

Announcing this activity publicly doesn't strike me as particularly prudent, even if it is valuable information...

Not even that. There is absolutely no personal gain for them in this. Even stealing the money has a gain and this experiment neither hurts nor benefits anybody. It's a completely neutral act not to be trolled into some nonsensical paralell about murder or theft.

The information gained doesn't benefit them? Why else did they do this, then? Benefit isn't just cash, you know. Anythiing that provides an advantage is a 'benefit'...

Sorry I expressed myself poorly. Their gain is virtually everybodys gain as it benefits us all except the criminals at hand. I stand corrected, yet even stronger on the fact that it was a neutral act. Had they kept the information for themselves on the other hand.

The law criminalizes behavior, not intent. Intent is no longer necessary to be convicted in the United States.

I'm not sure how many juries you've been on, but when I was on a jury 2 weeks ago for a criminal case the judge made it explicitly clear several times that we could only find the defendant guilty if evidence showed, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he intended to commit the crime (theft). In fact, intent is part of the definition of theft, which needs to be met in order to find someone guilty.

Civil cases are held to a lower standard, but criminal cases require "beyond a reasonable doubt". In fact, the very reason why he was found not guilty is because the prosecutor could not prove intent in a way that satisfied the indictment. It's extremely difficult to prove intent, the prosecutor was able to show intent to commit the crime several months after the crime was allegedly committed, but because of the wording of the indictment we could not find evidence of intent when the specific events happened. The prosecutor understood why we reached the verdict we did.

That sounds a little vague, I'll be happy to go into details of the trial if you're interested.

I'm not sure how many juries you've been on, but when I was on a jury 2 weeks ago for a criminal case the judge made it explicitly clear several times that we could only find the defendant guilty if evidence showed, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he intended to commit the crime (theft). In fact, intent is part of the definition of theft, which needs to be met in order to find someone guilty

That's true of theft, and any other crime where "mens rea" is a criminal element. There are crimes of strict liabilit

IANAL, but according to the wikipedia article on larceny, that is not larceny.

Without consent

The taking must be without the consent of the owner. This means that the taking must have been accomplished by stealth, force, threat of force, or deceit. If the offender obtained possession lawfully then a subsequent misappropriation is not larceny.

Intent to steal (animus furandi)

The offender must have taken the property with the intent to steal it. Traditionally intent to steal is defined as the intent to deprive

It was a case where one guy was buying a car from another guy, paid for it, and never got it. There was no evidence which showed that the seller intended to keep the money and the car at the time the money changed hands. So, according to the indictment he did not steal the money. They showed intent several months later when he modified the car (you wouldn't modify a car unless you considered it yours), but the indictment clearly stated that he was being charged for theft by intending to deprive the buyer of his property (money) when he took the payment, not several months down the line whenever he decided to keep the car. If the state had worded the indictment differently so that we could establish intent at a later date then he would have been found guilty.

It was a case where one guy was buying a car from another guy, paid for it, and never got it. There was no evidence which showed that the seller intended to keep the money and the car at the time the money changed hands. So, according to the indictment he did not steal the money. They showed intent several months later when he modified the car...

Doesn't the fact that he didn't deliver the car for several months show that he "intended" to take the money and run?

I'm not sure how many juries you've been on, but when I was on a jury 2 weeks ago for a criminal case...

How did the guy failing to deliver a car someone purchased become a criminal case? It sounds to me like (and I'm quoting Chris Rock) "this is something Judge Judy could've knocked out in half an hour, plus commercials!"

Doesn't the fact that he didn't deliver the car for several months show that he "intended" to take the money and run?

Not in it itself, there could be several reasons why the car wasn't delivered. Maybe the buyer never arranged pickup. There wasn't any evidence either way (there was a remarkable lack of communication for a $12k deal).

How did the guy failing to deliver a car someone purchased become a criminal case?

I believe theft of greater than $4000 is criminal in this state, the indictment specified he was being charged with theft of between $4000-$25000 (even though he was specifically being charged with theft of $12300, they still included that language).

Can they crack that egg and get rid of it now? Yeah. The sad thing is they'll need some court order to do it, rather than take the leech offline and be done with it. I wish they could trace route it so that a little drone could drop by the instigator's address with a payload of green goo.

Sounds like a testosterone reaction but consider just how many machines are bot'd these days and how rot

They didn't actually take control of the botnet. They predicted what domain would be registered one day by the botnet owners (there's an algorithm they use to pick domains to connect to) and registered it ahead of them. They then waited to see what machines connected so they could tell who was getting attacked by this. No takeovers of the machines, no theft of the botnet's services. Just data mining.

This is more like intercepting and recording the conversations had among a network of criminals, which yields a lot of good insights into how these organizations operate. This can be extremely valuable information if it's forwarded to appropriate law enforcement personnel, which don't always have the technical talent or resources to conduct investigations like this in the first place.

There have been studies on how far people travel daily/weekly/monthly. To do so, the study used thousands of people's locations based on cellphones. The participants of the study were fully unaware that they were being tracked for months. At least this one isn't scary...

There have been studies on how far people travel daily/weekly/monthly. To do so, the study used thousands of people's locations based on cellphones. The participants of the study were fully unaware that they were being tracked for months. At least this one isn't scary...

I don't trust college kids, most of them today are fanbois. I don't trust the government, most of them are totalitarians, egalitarians, corporatists or socialists. That said, I trust the government officials 1000 times more than I trust some college prick.

Where is the oversight? Where is the transparency? Which judge signed the wire tap warrant that gave these motherfuckers the legal right to spy on people? The fact is, no judge in their right mind could ever sign a broad sweeping warrant against multiple J

+5 Insightful really? To legally intercept and record conversations of suspected criminals in the USA you need a judge to issue a fucking warrant. I am not a lawyer but I don't think I need to be to make that statement. (Oh and please don't try and quote Patriot Act shit on this, it will just make me laugh)

No, you DON'T need a warrant to record private conversations of suspected criminals (or anybody), unless you are a government official acting in a capacity of law enforcement.

+5 Insightful really? To legally intercept and record conversations of suspected criminals in the USA you need a judge to issue a fucking warrant. I am not a lawyer but I don't think I need to be to make that statement. (Oh and please don't try and quote Patriot Act shit on this, it will just make me laugh)

No, you DON'T need a warrant to record private conversations of suspected criminals (or anybody), unless you are a government official acting in a capacity of law enforcement.

Private citizens can record whatever the hell they want, unless there are specific laws against it. Some states require every party to consent to recording conversations. Many do not.

Yes you DO need a warrant to perform a wiretap. Period. A phone call, email, IM, etc, are all protected speech. I can happily arrange an experiment, one in which you illegally perform a wiretap on me, and one in which I alert the authorities of your behavior. Would you like to participate?

I can happily arrange an experiment, one in which you illegally perform a wiretap on me, and one in which I alert the authorities of your behavior. Would you like to participate?

Now that's some seriously skewed logic... by you arranging the "wiretap" in question, you're directly consenting to the recording. Now, let's look at what you just said:

I can't consent to illegal activities. Your circularly flawed logic does not compute.

Once again, you're not consenting to illegal activity in a case where you're the one offering to arrange the event, given the fact that it would then be perfectly legal. If you're going to accuse someone of lacking basic logic skills, you should probably make sure you're not the one in need of an educati

Been on a jury, wasn't informed of that particular right. In fact the words used were "You must find the defendant either guilty or not guilty."

In all honesty, though, I would say I was the only person in the trial who didn't find it a total time soak. You won't get jury nullification when the jurors don't care enough about justice to concentrate fully.

Of course they won't tell you about it (in fact, I've heard that mentioning jury nullification can get one rejected from jury duty). And yes, you must find them either guilty or not guilty... jury nullification occurs when the jury rules a defendant not guilty in blatant disregard for the law (which would find the person guilty) because they believe the law is wrong. Needless to say, judges & lawmakers don't like the concept.

How this works in reality, is typically, to do the research, the researcher will get a sample of 'test machines' they own infected by visiting a drive-by-downloader's site in a specially controlled environment. Where they monitor all the botnet node's network activities, block any unexpected ones, and "de-fang" or "make benign" its activities (e.g. if it normally sends spam with a malware link, they may replace the link with a beacon link). The other possibility is they work with people whose machi

I used to have a rather gruesome book detailing some of those experiments, and while I don't think a lot was gained by transplanting spare heads onto victims &c., I understand that the data from dropping "test subjects" into ice water to see how long it took them to die has been quite valuable for things like Naval Air rescue planning. Always look on the bright side, mate.

My father is a doctor, and I raised this point with him. He indicated that while there were some very broad things that could be drawn from these 'studies', most of them were flawed in major ways that precluded their ongoing usefulness. In particular, he mentioned some of the Nazi studies that may have started, on the surface, to have a legitimate scientific goal, but they were quickly revealed as a means to explore the depravity of the researcher.

I guess I equivocated too much. The cold water survival times were useful data, which has found purpose, but indeed the other stuff was incredible mad-scientist stuff that clearly illustrated deep derangement on the part of the psychos doing the work. I wish I still had that book, it was truly INcredible, and I'd like to show it to some of the stupid Nazi-symps in my ghetto hometown.

I didn't even think it was possible to relate this subject to Nazis.. Mad props to you.

But these botnet studies (at least the well done ones) are in no way similar. Most security researchers actually are very careful with their methodology, and perform their studies in a way that assures they won't cause any harm (except maybe to the botnet operator by revealing their methods, in some cases).

It is exactly the same thing for those of us with boundary issues, or anyone trying to argue in good faith. I happen to be both. I don't give a damn about human suffering--I do care that "scientists" appear to get a free pass to circumvent the law--which is clearly the point the person was making.

You might want to say we should address the issue and not compare the two--one being supposedly horrible. Fine...all well and good. But at the core, you have just ran an argument by appeal to emotion...that is to say...you have failed to make a correct argument.

It isn't law if one group gets to ignore it and another is punished--it's privilege. The same privilege exerted by the the group that already Godwinned this debate--the claim that they were above the law because they did it for a good reason.

First of all I was replying to the comment by GP, and there was no argument in this post by this AC. Secondly while the AC was trying to bind the events together I was showing how to separate them, using the exact same type of rhetoric as him. You try to sound sophisticated, yet you fail epically. And no -- a complete lack of empathy isn't a "point of view", it's called sociopathy [wikipedia.org].

It's the principle of the thing. Botnet creators are entitled to a reasonable expectation of privacy, under the law, right? Besides, if it were YOUR botnet they were infiltrating, you would be pissed, too.

Yes, they actually did commit a crime. and yes I did RTFA. They reverse engineered the algorithm of the js package. That algorithm was essentially copy protection aka DRM. This is a federal felony under the DMCA.

It's not a crime. It's a specious theory that the code the botnet authors utilize might somehow be viewed by the court as a technical measure that effectively controls access to or ability to copy a work, and that the researchers did circumvent those controls under 1201(a)(1)(A) of the DMCA.

The belief that the malware can be considered a "publication" is in doubt. The software is non-creative, non-beneficial.

Another thing... Javascript = source code. Obviously, if you publish your source code, people can examine it and see how it works. You really can't call what the researchers did "reverse engineering". (Nor can you call the Javascript source code "copy protection" or DRM.)

RTFA; they didn't break the law at all. They reverse-engineered an injection script, registered some attack domains before the botnet owners were able to do so, and then profiled the machines which were sent to their honeypot server by the injection script. (The script was a javascript which was somehow injected into innocuous sites by the hackers; its purpose was to redirect visitors to the actual malicious URL, which was auto-generated and different each day – but predictable, so that the botnet own